Throughout the history of mankind religion has been a creative and innovative factor of great strength, able to change societies, create new cultures, and shape strong identities. In Religion as an Agent of Change leading historians and Church historians discuss religion as a driving force in historical development on the basis of three particular cases from the history of Christianity in Western Europe: the Crusades, the Reformation, and Pietism. The empirical case studies in the book present important results and viewpoints from new research in these three historical phenomena, to a large degree undertaken in our own generation, thus establishing a solid foundation for further scholarly discussions about the role of the Christian religion as a driving force in history.
Contributors are: Arne Bugge Amundsen, Ole Peter Grell, Martin H. Jung, Thomas Kaufmann, Fred van Lieburg, Christoph T. Maier, Peter Marshall, Hugh McLeod, Jonathan Phillips, Felicitas Schmieder, and John Wolffe.
Per Ingesman, Ph.D. (1985), is Professor of Church History at Aarhus University in Denmark. He specializes in and has published many monographs and anthologies on late medieval and early modern history and Church history.
Contents
Preface
List of Contributors
Introduction
Per Ingesman
The Long March of Religious History: Where have We Travelled since the Sixties, and Why?
Hugh McLeod
Part 1 The Crusades
Pope Innocent iii and the Crusades Revisited
Christoph T. Maier
Caffaro of Genoa and the Motives of Early Crusaders
Jonathan Phillips
Opening up the World and the Minds: The Crusades as an Engine of Change in Missionary Conceptions
Felicitas Schmieder
Part 2 The Reformation
What is Lutheran Confessional Culture?
Thomas Kaufmann
The Creation of a Calvinist Identity in the Reformation Period
Ole Peter Grell
Changing Identities in the English Reformation
Peter Marshall
Part 3 Pietism
Piety or Pietism? A Comparison of Early Modern Danish and Dutch Examples of Interconfessional Religiosity
Fred van Lieburg
The Impact of Pietism on Culture and Society in Germany
Martin H. Jung
Crusading, Reformation and Pietism in Nineteenth-Century North Atlantic Evangelicalism
John Wolffe
Religion as an Agent of Change – Concluding Remarks
Arne Bugge Amundsen
Index
All interested in the history of either the Crusades, the Reformation, or Pietism, and anyone preoccupied with the general question of the Christian religion as a driving force in history.